keywords: Cardinal George Pell

What's he doing in my dream, that cardinal from Ballarat? He's in some sort of seventies presbytery or hardwood hall, shirt-sleeved but with collar on and playing ping-pong like a pro, fully-focused, yet relaxed. Forehand, backhand, lob or smash, nothing is beyond his reach. The other player is unseen but plainly worthy of attack. There's just the click of celluloid foreshadowing the rise to Rome. No ball hit that's not hit back.

Wednesday night's ABC 7.30 program carried allegations against Cardinal George Pell which, if true, are devastating: life ruining for victims like Damian Dignan and Lyndon Monument; confronting for all citizens committed to the wellbeing of children; and earth shattering for Catholics who still have faith in their church. The report is also troubling for those of us concerned about due process and the rule of law - not as academic notions for lawyers but as the secure bulwarks of a society in which everyone's rights and interests are protected.

The limitations of Marr's account are the obverse of its virtues. It sifts Pell's motives and words but not those of his critics, and simplifies complexities. The details are designed to imply character. Churches are empty or full depending on the needs of the plot; Pell does not speak but booms. If a cock crows in a distant farmyard it crows for the Cardinal alone. This makes for engaging reading, but demands careful judgment.

Atheist Richard Dawkins' debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in February was a gentlemanly affair. By contrast Dawkins' debate with Cardinal George Pell on the ABC's Q&A this week was billed as a 'title fight of belief'. As one comment on Twitter noted the next day, 'they both lost'.

Around 97 per cent of climate scientists actively publishing in peer-reviewed literature support the thesis that human activities are causing climate change. Cardinal George Pell's position is not an informed scientific view, but is driven by politics.

Cardinal George Pell told the Australian Workers' Union National
Conference last week why quick action to avoid mass unemployment in the
looming recession is crucial to protect the wellbeing of many
Australians.

It sounds like a police state effort. An author makes an attempt to assist a pseudonymously named prisoner publish a memoir. The effort is scotched by the authorities. The police spring into action raiding the cell of that prisoner, and that of his brother. All take place without the knowledge of the Australia media or public.

The royal commission concluded that child safety, in all its organisational ramifications, raised questions of culture and governance for the church. If the Plenary Council 2020 doesn't take such issues seriously then it will be one indicator that the momentum around last year's official national apology has slowed.

The sentencing of Pell highlighted the dismay and soul-searching among Catholics at sex abuse and its devastation of the lives of victims and their families. It also brought home the depth of the crisis caused by clerical sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Although it still challenges understanding, a historical parallel may help illuminate it.

This book is a warning of the terrible price we shall pay if we do not follow Pope Francis' leadership. Frank Brennan launches Anthony M. Maher's The Forgotten Jesuit of Catholic Modernism: George Tyrrell's Prophetic Theology. Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, 11 September 2018

It's a common refrain from survivors of clerical sexual abuse, often heard when church leaders try to explain away their failure to listen and respond to the crimes of their peers: 'They just don't get it.' Up until recently, Pope Francis has seemed to 'get it' in his response to the crisis of abuse. But recent events have raised doubts.

The statistics were horrifying. Every case represented a person who claims as a child to have been abused by a person of authority in a Catholic institution. Whichever way the statistics are interpreted in comparison with other institutions, they are appalling. We need to hold the victims clearly in focus.